Data Quality in Generating Hospital Reports

Quality and Accessibility of Information Quantitative or qualitative data used in the report on how many patients have been admitted for pneumonia over the past several months would need to be complete in that it shows evidence of each of the following characteristics: accuracy, accessibility, comprehensiveness, completeness, consistency, currency, definition, granularity, precision, lineage, relevancy, and timeliness. The same holds true for a scenario in which a drug has been recalled and patients need to be contacted.

Data should be quality in both cases, as it informs the reader of pertinent stats and needed facts (Lin, 2013). In the case of providing a report on the number of patients admitted for pneumonia, an example of accuracy of data would be that the report truly represents the actuality or the reality of the situation.

Names, for example, are not misspelled and indicate actually persons in both qualitative and quantitative data and for the purpose of this report the actual number of admitted patients is correct and not "off" by any margin of error. In the scenario in which affected patients need to be identified for a drug recall, names, addresses, phone numbers and treatments (the drugs used/prescribed) plus dates would need to be generated.

Accessibility in this case would mean that the data is easily located by spreadsheet, for example, or by presentation index. Patients who present with symptoms of pneumonia should be catalogued and, if admitted, recorded for such. Thus categorically this information should be easily accessible and presented with the same ease in the report, whether qualitative or quantitative -- for example, in the executive summary or abstract at the top of the report.

In the scenario involving the drug recall, the data would need to be easily found in spreadsheet-like or column form, with numbers, names and drug prescription with dates would need to be given in alphabetical order. Comprehensiveness should also be a characteristic of the data in the sense that the description of the patient and the symptoms of pneumonia are recorded.

For example, the patient's background, presentation, treatment and follow-up should all be recorded both quantitatively and qualitatively, that is with simply numbers that indicate time, duration, etc., and with descriptions that indicate the state of the patient's health history, stay, etc. In the drug recall scenario, this would mean having all of the patient's information available (name, age, gender, presentation, treatment, date, address, number). Completeness of data in this report would refer to whether or not all the needed information is made available.

No data should be missing or unusable, even if the reporter does not deem it necessary; from another perspective it may be desired. Thus, in both types of reporting, qualitative and quantitative (description reporting and spreadsheet reporting, for example), data should include all information, regarding type, duration, treatment, persons, sex, age, location, etc.

In the drug recall scenario, completeness would be seen in the same manner, in a quantitative report that provides the necessary information, including other prescriptions that the patient is currently on so that the desk is knowledgeable regarding questions the patient might have about other medications for use. Consistency would be needed in all types of reports. In the report on patients admitted for pneumonia, the data would have to be free of conflicting numbers.

For example, it could not be said that patient Z was admitted for pneumonia, if elsewhere he is reported as being admitted for something altogether different. Values should be consistent. For the drug recall scenario, if numbers and contact info are not consistent, problems will result when trying to contact patients. Thus records should be kept up-to-date and providers should ask whether addresses or numbers have changed since last visit. This plays into the characteristic of currency, too.

If information is not current, then it is useless and causes more trouble. up-to-date records are essential for an organization like a hospital and must be maintained, especially for reasons such as drug recalls when patients need to be contacted.

Data should also contain definition: that is, in the case of the pneumonia admittance example, the presentation characteristics of the patient should be defined (that means a qualitative description should at least be on record) though for the report, while this information could be made available in a follow-up generated report, it would only be necessary to ensure that the number is accurate based on the pneumonia definition provided at the outset.

In the drug recall scenario, an example of definition could be seen in the exact type of drug, its purpose and typical prescribers. This information should be recorded under drug headings, with all prescribed that drug found in the category. Granularity refers to the depth of information.

For the pneumonia scenario, the depth is not needed to be great as just a number is requested; for the drug recall scenario, the depth will need to be greater because names, prescriptions and contact info are all needed in order to meet the needs of the hospital tasked with coordinating the process. Granularity in this case could include secondary contacts as well and information about getting a new prescription for patients who want to know what they are supposed to do now.

Precision refers to data being on target and exact. For the pneumonia scenario, what is required is an exact, precise number -- not a rounded off number or an approximate number -- but an exact number. This means the total patients admitted with pneumonia symptoms/diagnoses and/or for treatment needs to be tallied over a given amount of time. For the drug recall scenario, precision would necessitate that the names and contact info be exact with no misspellings or out of date material.

Precision is related of course to completeness and to consistency in this regard. Lineage in data refers to the information's life cycle, how it moves over time. In the pneumonia scenario, this would include the length of stay for the patient admitted, the degree of pneumonia, its development and use of treatment. In the recall scenario, lineage would.